Reducing Marriage to include Same Sex Unions

by David Holloway, CEN Clause 1 of Article 16 of the UN Declaration of Human Right says: “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.”

 Clause 3 then elaborates on the family: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state.”

 That last clause is significant. First, it distinguishes “society” from the “state” and so immediately rules out the legitimacy of any totalitarian states (the state must itself be limited as well as putting limits on society). Secondly, it says that the state has a duty (so has society) to “protect” (and, therefore, not be destructive of) the family, which clause 1 ties to heterosexual marriage. The state, therefore, has no right to interfere with the marriage family, change it or manipulate it for its own purposes.

 This not only reflects Christian teaching but, also, universal teaching. The anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, sums it up when he says the family everywhere is “based on a union, more or less durable, but socially approved, of two individuals of opposite sexes who establish a household and bear and raise children.” So this marriage-based family is “a social institution with a biological foundation”. And that biology is based not on government whim, but on hard “nature”. In the whole UN declaration the only one application of the word “natural” is to the family, which, therefore, has a “natural” right to protection and not a mere legal right passed by Parliament and which can be rescinded. The family is “prior” to the state. Read the rest here.